This soup is SO good, I had to share it.  It is also SO easy, though you need a blender.

Ingredients:

One large head of broccoli, or two smaller ones, finely chopped, leaves, stalk (if not too tough) the whole thing.

One cup of cashew nuts soaked over night and rinsed.

One cup of well cooked brown rice.

One head of garlic, finely chopped, crushed or put through your garlic press.

Olive oil.

A few fennel seeds.

Approximately four cups of good liquid vege stock – I add this to taste and thickness.

One bay leaf and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

Sweat the garlic in the oil, in your biggest soup pot, for a few minutes.  Add the fennel seeds if you have them, then add the chopped broccoli, turn up the heat to cook through a little and incorporate the garlic, then add the soup stock and the bay leaf.  Bring to the boil with the lid and allow to slimmer for about 30 minutes, or until the biggest chunks of broccoli are tender.  Add the brown rice and cashews, let it all simmer for another fine minutes to warm through, squeeze over some lemon juice and take out your blender (if you haven’t already!) Let the soup sit off the stove to cool a little.

Remove the bay leaf, and process the soup in your blender, you might want to heat it through again before serving,  find it just needs a stir.  Season with salt and more lemon or lime as desired and eat with fresh baked bread as a starter or like I do, as meal as it is.  Yum!

The cashews provide the rich creaminess of this soup, it still will be delicious if you do not have them, or you can add more, it gives a lovely creamy green colour.  With the brown rice you get a load of protein along with your fiber, calcium and all the other goodies in broccoli.

These babies were planted in November, I bought one punnet which had nine seedlings, so a bit of a bonus – most usually have six.  The punnet was $3.50, and they were organic seedlings, just to keep in mind the economics, it was a little experiment, it works out to about 40 cents per plant, each yielded at least one good cob, we had some fertilization issues with the lower cobs, probably due to close planting.

The plants grew, like, well, sweet corn, very exciting, good instant gratification gardening!

Above was about a month after planting, below, just before harvesting:

And one of the juicy cobs…

A worthwhile crop, sweet corn varies between $1 per cob, to maybe 2 for $1 when they are plentiful, organic more pricey again, picked fresh and eaten straight away, they don’t get much better.  Great for the kids of course too.

Next year, I’ll give them more space, they are fairly low maintenance, just regular water (grey water from our washing machine) and I added some organic fertilizer when I planted out the seedlings, and the occasional worm farm wee was added to buckets of water.

Wohoo!  Happy new year!  I had a little bit of an op shop last week, while spending time with family in Katikati, I picked up this sweet pair of David Elman Shoes.  What a score, just – only just – my size, woo, and only four bucks!

I am always on the look out for unusual vintage fabric (within my budget) and when I spied this piece of floral light weight knit, I couldn’t walk away, yeha, only one dollar, it will make a comfy blouse.

I hope you all had a safe and fun time over the new year period, I have some new projects on the go, including an entry into the World of Wearable Art this year, fingers crossed!  More on that later…

‘Pattern Presents’.  Oh I know it’s nerdy, but it’s also a pretty way to keep my projects together.

Each bundle is a project cut, marked and pinned ready to dart or finish edges as soon as I get a moment, sometimes I will zig zag the edges on a number of projects I have on the go, if the thread colour works for a few, it seems like an efficient way for me to work, and it means that I get some reasonable chunks of a dress or outfit complete in one hit, and at times, it feels like I complete a number of new dresses in a few days.

On the sewing front, I’m looking to be more disciplined when it comes to planning for the coming season, I’m getting more organised, and I feel more confident with matching my sometimes mystery fabric choices with my patterns.  I have had a bit of a clear out, actually, more of a ‘clear and re-arrange’ of the sewing room.  Tricky as both Luna and Blake are spending more time in here with me while I work, which is great and sometimes a touch over crowded.

I have been given some cool vintage recipe books, and a recipe catalogue box, so I’m going to be whipping up some more nana style cakes and goodies.  Take a look at this little gem..  What I love about recipe books from this period is not only that they are full of amazing over the top illustrations of incredible meals, but they are often quite thrifty, so good tips on making your meals go further, substituting expensive ingredients like eggs, and sometimes dairy, so all good as far as I’m concerned.

This also means more High Teas, more cocktail parties, more bottling, and upping food production for our family from our ever increasing garden.  And more dresses.

Luna did some shopping (unpacked the vege box) quite an interesting use of containers or baskets. and colours.  This is now our picnic basket and we eat outdoors often these days.  Loving the sunshine and no floor or table to clean afterwards!

Very organised!

Do your kids get to do plenty of chopping?

This started out as a bok choi leaf… interesting shapes.

This is one of my regulars, the whole family loves it, and it almost cooks itself, there are times when I have the chance to spend time on a meal, but this one can be ready in about 30 minutes if I’m speedy!

I use my big soup pot, and like my basic tomato soup recipe here, I can start it well ahead of time.

The basic recipe calls for:

Arborio rice (you can use short grain rice too, but it doesn’t seem to hold it’s shape so well..)

vege stock

garlic and/or an onion (shallots are really nice too)

spices, I often use cumin, fennel is good, as are black cumin seeds and mustard seeds.

You can use any number of veges that you might have at hand, we had loads of carrots last week so I made a risotto with a couple of grated and finely chopped carrots, you can use mushrooms (just chop finely, toss them in to cook with the garlic and spices) sliverbeet or spinach, tomatoes, fresh or canned, fresh tomatoes are really good if you chop them and gently mix them through just before you serve up..  Walnuts are divine in risotto, I will add some early on with the rice, and sprinkle them on over the top to serve… YUM.  Fresh herbs and a squeeze of lime of if you don’t have lime, lemon is good too.

You might have noticed I get a bit out of hand with the olive oil, I pour a fair amount into my biggest cooking pot, add finely chopped or grated garlic (you can also add or only use onions, but we love garlic) and the spices.  This you can do in the morning and leave till the evening, all the spices and garlic infuse into the oil and it smells lovely…

When you’re ready to go, just lightly cook off the garlic and spices, remove from heat and add the rice, I usually go for a cup, this makes plenty for the four of us (two big people and two little ones) as well as some left over for lunches.  Stir the rice through the oil, garlic and spices, until the rice is coated, then add twice the amount of stock, so if one cup of rice, two cups of vege stock, I like to have a little hot water at hand just incase, also worth noting, some veges will have higher amounts of water, like tomatoes, so just see how it goes.

I use this stock, it’s the only one I can get that has no msg or palm oil!

So, add your stock, lid on, and bring to the boil, I give it a quick stir as it can stick, then drop the temp right down to low, lid on…

In theory you ought to leave it with the lid on while it gently fluffs up, this takes about 10-15 minutes (I usually check in every 5 minutes and give a gentle stir as mine tends to stick).

This is a good time to add any chopped veges or nuts, I like to wash and reserve greens like silverbeet, rocket etc and toss them in at the end.

Sprinkle veges on to and stir through, or leave all rustic on top if you serve up in the pot!

This is so good, I sometimes add a half a cup or so of just cook lentils and stir them in before serving, a little extra protein and colour.

Woha, this was good, a vegan cheezecake, with frozen feijoa sauce… all raw, ALL good.

I’ve made a number of variations on this recipe, a berry cheezecake, and have found that it barely needs sweetener, I use about half a cup of honey in the cashew cheeze, and it’s plenty, with the fruity sauce (this was made with scooped out feijoa’s frozen overnight then defrosted and blended before pouring deliciously over the set cake…) you really don’t need much honey/sugar/nectar.

Off for an adventure.

So what was this most precious thing that Luna was running to show me?

Oh yes, a “Tiny mushroom!”

Found somewhere right over there…

That wasn’t the only one either.

So much to discover at Cornwall Park.  Luna declared (after Autumn Equinox dinner, which included candles) “Today was the best day!”

Kauri bark and gum,

Lichen!

Om nom nom, risotto with lentils, carrot and walnuts, accompanied by roast kumara and potato, topped with fresh basil…

Hope you had a good equinox.

Kimchi is SO good.  It is also SO expensive, really.

I’m into fermented foods these days, and have made my own batch or kimchi, I made some years ago with a Korean friend, and dithered a bit in finding a substitute for fish sauce, which was a key ingredient.

My recipe is simple, and as I really wanted to make it and then eat it as soon as possible I wilted the cabbage for only a few hours.  Recipes I had found involved anything from 45 minutes to 24 hours or salting the cabbage, and sometimes even longer…

Yum!

So, here’s what I used:

One smallish daikon radish, peeled, and sliced into half circles.

Three pak choi cabbages, washed and chopped in lengths of about 3-2cms.  I wanted Chinese cabbage but was not able to get one, this worked out ok, though I think pak choi is slightly bitter.

One medium onion, sliced.

These I wilted with lots of salt, in one of my biggest soup pots.  I spread a layer of chopped cabbage and sprinkled with about a teaspoon of rock salt, another layer and sprinkled with salt, and so on till the pot was full.  I did the same thing to the chopped daikon and sliced onion, I managed to fit it all in one big pot, with a plate between each different food layer, the salt needs to be washed off again, so it’s easier if they are not all mixed in at first.

While you let this sit, I waited about two hours, you will see quite a lot of water come away, you can make up the spicy paste!  Yum!

I used:
About 2/3 tablespoons of both (fresh) crushed garlic and (bought) crushed ginger and two tablespoons (bought) chili paste, this spicy goodness I combined with about 1/4 cup lemon juice and a cup of tamari sauce.  I was keen to use all fresh garlic, ginger and chili as you can taste the preservatives, but due to small people’s needs there were some time constraints, next time I’ll do fresh.

Now, maybe an hour or two has passed, but maybe even 24 hours has gone by, if you can wait that long!

It’s time to rinse off your salted ingredients, under running water rinse as carefully as you can, the veges become quite salty and wilted, so don’t rush this stage.

Then, all you do is get the pile of veges and mix in your spicy juicy paste mixture, go on, use both hands.

So yummy, you can sit down and eat a load now, you can scoop the mix into those glass jars you have boiled for the last five minutes, staying about one cm from the brim, topping up with any remaining liquid, and share it around, or keep it chilled and eat it yourself!

I made a couple to give away and placed two of the sliced half circles of daikon at the top, just before I topped up the juice and screwed on the lid.

Notes:

I found the pak choi could have had more than 2 hours with the salt, also, there was still a bit of a salty residue on the leaves, so I’d probably take more care rinsing next time too.  Two tablespoons of chili paste made the kimchi fairly mild, so up it if you like it hot.  This recipe makes quite a lot of liquid, which we like to use on rice, noodles etc. you can add less tamari if you wish.

I never liked tomato soup until I made my own, and it’s so easy!

This recipe is vegan and can be adapted to make a tomatoey base for pastas, pizzas and other soups like minestrone.

The ingredients are basic, you need olive oil, a couple of cans (maybe about 2 – 4 small cans 400gms or there abouts) or a couple of kilograms of fresh tomatoes – you’ll need to skin them (perhaps by dropping them into a large pot of rapidly boiling water to loosen the skin) a half or cup or so of tomato paste (but this works ok without it) and vegetable stock.  You can use garlic, onions and spices, I like to use garlic and some cumin.

I add red lentils to this (along with a slash of molasses and some salt) and use it as a base for pasta sauces, soups, pizzas.  If you blend it all up it’s a great tomatoey lentiley paste/sauce if you prefer a smooth texture, or have people who are scared of lentils.

Sometimes it’s more practical for me to start these meals at lunch or earlier if I’m out for the day.  I just chop all the garlic (or here I’ve left them whole as we are getting to the smaller bulbs now..) and drop them in to a pot which has some olive oil (enough to generously cover the bottom of the pot).  If you are leaving this for the day or even and hour, put a lid on it!

When the time comes to prepare you’ll swoon over the deliciousness of the garlic as the infused flavours waft out when you lift the lid…  I added my spices, about a teaspoon of each?  As much as I can grab in a few fingers, cumin seed and red mustard seed.  I like to cook the garlic slowly, so it sweats and the spices eventually start to sizzle.

All the while get some water boiling for your stock, if that’s how yours comes, I use a powdered stock and tend to add it to taste, maybe about 4 cups goes into this soup.  Pour in to the garlic and spices your tomato paste, stir it through, add your canned or fresh, skinned and chopped tomato mix, I like to heat it through and reduce it a bit.

But you don’t have to, you can just put it all into the big pot with your stock, warm it through, cook for a few minutes, gently stirring while you find some pretty bowls to serve it in, and pull out the fresh baked bread…

Taste it and maybe season with a little salt, sprinkle on some fresh parsley or other fresh herbs, maybe some cracked pepper…

And enjoy!

Oh and this freezes really well, so fill your freezer and forget about the tinned stuff!